Tangyue Stone Arches

Composed of 7 arches, the Tangyue Memorial Archway Group is located on the road at the entrance of the Tangyu village in the west of Shexian County. Without using any nail or rivet at all, the Tangyue Memorial Arch Group is all made of high quality green stones produced in Shexian County. The skillful combinations of stones are astonishing. In addition, there are a large number of beautiful Hui carvings around the body of the arches.

Among The Tangyue Memorial Arch Group, three of seven are made in the Ming dynasty, and four are in the Qing Dynasty. Although covering a large time scale, their surprisingly unified style of architecture is a successful combination of the old and the new, which makes the whole series looked like one day’s work.

All these are memorial arches of Bao families of Tangyue village. They arrange themselves in the successive order of loyalty, filial piety and women's chastity. One memorial arch was built in the Yongle period of the Ming dynasty to honor a father and a son. After being captured by a rebel group, they were positioned in a painfully difficult situation: the rebels wanted to kill one of them and it’s up to themselves to decide who was to live and who was to die. They all wanted to die in exchange for the other’s life. In order to honor the father and son, the then emperor granted the memorial arch. Later, Qianlong, a famous emperor of the Qing dynasty, appropriated sliver to repair it, and inscribed a couplet: unrivaled of love and filial piety in the whole world. Since then, the memorial archways were respected by generations of Chinese emperors.

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How to Get There?

There are a lot of direct regular buses and common buses in Shexian County. The fare of a ticket is 2 Yuan.